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Is Republican Intransigence Reasonable?

The House GOP has voted to repeal Obamacare 41 times, as of last count, but that link is from Sept.12 and maybe by now the number is higher yet. One can thus conclude that the GOP sees advantage in staking out a public position against Obamacare, whether this be with voters, donors, primary opponents, whatever.

By threatening a government shutdown over Obamacare defunding, the GOP is again staking out a public position against the law. Such a statement is more focal, and generates more publicity, than a 42nd vote for repeal. Everyone is talking about it, even me (sorry people). If you’ve voted 41 times for repeal, you will like the fact that everyone is concerned with this new dispute.

If the GOP lets the government actually shut down, people will talk about their Obamacare stance even more. But the party, and its representatives, will bear costs from being associated with the shutdown, which is inconvenient, hurts the economy, and lowers our international status. We don’t know whether they will cross this threshold, but either way it is a purely political calculation and not especially mysterious or “irrational.”

This is as good a summary as I’ve seen of the basic strategy being pursued by the savvier of what you might call the House Intransigents. Not by all of them, however: Pace Cowen, I do think that portions of the pro-shutdown wing of the G.O.P. are irrational or close to it, in that they genuinely believe that a shutdown could lead to the White House simply surrendering and defunding its own domestic policy centerpiece – a belief that I would describe as a straightforwardly reason-defying point of view. But others are following roughly the calculus Cowen describes, which could be rewritten as follows:

1) Obamacare is the biggest thing the president has done and also the most persistently unpopular.

2) The Republicans’ biggest political victory in the Obama era, the 2010 midterm sweep (and the Scott Brown special election that preceded it), came about when the health care bill was front and center in the public conversation, and G.O.P. opposition to the bill was the party’s defining issue.

3) We’re entering another midterm year, and the health care law is about to be implemented …

4) … so the Republican Party’s best chance to recreate the environment of 2010 in 2014 is to push its opposition to Obamacare into the headlines any way it can. Brinksmanship has risks, but there’s simply no better way to create the kind of stark contrast that Republican need for base mobilization and independent-wooing alike.

At bottom, this theory depends on the belief that even though voters say they don’t want the government shut down to defund Obamacare, what they’ll actually remember from this debate a year from now is that Republicans were really, really against the law and Democrats were really, really for it. And if, as many conservatives believe, the law will be even more unpopular after a year of implementation than it is today, that contrast will trump any residual irritation at G.O.P. brinksmanship, and voters will reward Republicans for their position rather than punishing them for their tactics.

This theory does find some support in recent political events. The 2010 election really did tip more toward the G.O.P. than the economic fundamentals predicted, and the role of grassroots zeal in making that election a referendum on Obamacare probably helped Republicans more than it cost them (outside of certain Senate races, that is). Democrats and liberals mock the House’s repeated anti-Obamacare votes, but – even allowing for the complexities and vagaries of public opinion — it really is one of the few major domestic policy issues where the country has been consistently on the Republican Party’s side. And depending on how things turn out with Year One of its implementation, it isn’t entirely crazy to to imagine that the country will be thinking much more about where the parties stand, and how firmly, on health care next fall than about whether the G.O.P. went a little too far over the brink in its budgetary tactics the year before.

But even if you grant that this strategy isn’t entirely unreasonable (which isn’t the same as agreeing that it’s wise – I don’t), the problem for Republicans is that it has become deeply entangled – in part because of deliberate rhetorical choices by figures like Ted Cruz — with the genuinely unreasonable, irresponsible, and self-destructive theory I described above, in which a shutdown is actually a way to get Obamacare defunded now, and all the party needs to do is stick to its guns and eventually the White House will buckle, the health care law will fall, and the republic will be saved. The savvier, saner, “let’s only threaten a shutdown” plan, in which brinksmanship is a tactic to highlight differences and prove commitment, only works if it persuades both base voters and swing voters that the party is absolutely committed to repealing Obamacare without persuading the latter that the party is absolutely bonkers. But if the base has been told true commitment should lead to actual legislative victory (and that this might be the “last chance” to stop Obamacare), then merely threatening a shutdown, or letting one happen for a few days and then cutting a deal, is as likely to disillusion conservative voters heading in to 2014 as it is to mobilize them. And if the G.O.P. doesn’t want to disillusion them, then it doesn’t have an obvious way to back off or quickly make a deal – in which case the party is risking a real debacle with non-base voters, who might forgive a brief shutdown but probably won’t forgive Republicans if it turns into a lurching political and economic crisis.

Right now, then, a kind of sour spot seems like a pretty plausible outcome for Republicans: A shutdown that lasts just long enough to convince swing voters that the G.O.P. can’t be trusted with the reins of government, but also ends with the party’s grassroots convinced that they’ve been sold out by their leaders once again. And because that sour spot is so plausible, and has been for some time, it’s hard to escape the impression that even the “reasonable” case for G.O.P. brinksmanship is only reasonable if the goal mostly just to increase the pro-shutdown faction’s power within the party, irrespective of what that means for either the actual repeal of Obamacare or for Republican prospects in the next few national elections.

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About

Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of "Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class" (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review.